Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/154

 mere visits or commercial efforts of transient character. They sustained and advanced the claim of the United States to the country, however, and in that way nationally served a good purpose.

After the fur gatherers in point of permanent residence came the missionaries, Whitman, Eells, Walker, Blanchet, and others. While all honor is due them for their coming, their good works, their struggles and sufferings in behalf of what they deemed right and best, and their efforts to improve the savages about them, they were of a class to themselves, and somewhat removed from the men who arrived later and made the Territory of Washington.

The first of these men were of the overland immigration of 1844, the most conspicuous figure among them being Michael T. Simmons. Simmons was a Kentuckian, tall, commanding, learned in the ways of men but not of schools. Others with him were James McAllister, Samuel B. Crockett, Jesse Ferguson, David Kindred, Gabriel Jones, and George W. Bush, all but Crockett and Ferguson with families. On arriving at Fort Vancouver they did as everybody else did: inquired of McLoughlin and Douglas as to the country, the prospects, opportunities, and for advice. The representatives of the great company freely and frankly told them all they wanted, to wit, that the Americans generally were locating south of the Columbia River, not one so far being north; that the Willamette was the largest valley north of Mexico, and was then in a condition of rapid commercial development; that the soil and climate there were good, the chances for trade excellent, the only schools in the country there, and that in every way they believed it to be preferable for those from the States there to settle. As a matter of fact this information was true and this advice good; but also it was just as much a matter of fact that these Britons did not want American settlers north of the Columbia, which